


duress

by ignitesthestars



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: About Time, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Kissing, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 13:56:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6910081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignitesthestars/pseuds/ignitesthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To be close to her is to crack her open that little bit more, and Steve is too raw in his own way to want to be the one with the crow-bar. He can’t do that to her.</p><p>Lucky for both of them, it's not just up to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	duress

It just doesn’t _occur_  to him.

It’s not a self-esteem thing. Sure, there’s a part of Steve that’s still that scrawny little punk from the forties but that’s - the best of him is too corny. The core of him, maybe. The point is, there’s no part of him that’s moping around thinking that he’s not good enough for Natasha Romanoff.

No good for her, maybe. Vulnerability wears hard on her, even if she’d tackled it with the same calm determination in the wake of SHIELD’s downfall as she did everything else. There’s Barton, there’s Banner, and in moments when her eyes longer too long and it takes her extra seconds to speak, he thinks there’s something of Bucky, somehow, that has gotten under her skin. 

To be close to her is to crack her open that little bit more, and Steve is too raw in his own way to want to be the one with the crow-bar. He can’t do that to her.

“So,” she says one evening, when the others are piled up in the latest safehouse with a battered old Wii and way too much junk food. They’re adults, but in the face of Mario Kart you can’t tell.

Steve half turns his body towards her from where he’s leaning on the balcony, beer dangling from his fingers. He can’t get drunk, but it’s late summer and the sun is setting, fingers of red stretching across the sky to match the shade of her hair. She’s taken to wearing it up lately, although a few strands have escaped the messy bun she’s got it in now, curling again the stretch of her neck. 

Beer weather. He covers the way his breath catches in his throat with a raised eyebrow, a silent invitation for her to finish her sentence.

Natasha grins at him, and there’s teeth in the expression as she steps into the space left open between him and the railing. Slim, deadly fingers curve around the neck of the bottle, the brush of her skin on his sending sparks skittering up his arm. She holds his gaze for a beat too long as she takes a swig, and then she’s turning away from him, draping her arms over the side of the balcony. 

They’re in the middle of suburbia. There’s something soothing about the stretch of perfectly manicured grass rolling out in front of them, broken only by a carefully placed lemon tree.

Soothing, and a little alien.

“So?” he prompts, like his heart isn’t in his throat at the way the dying light limns her profile.

She takes another pull from the bottle. “I’m wondering. If you’re still trying to gather the courage to make your move, or if you’ve got it and something else stupid is stopping you.”

Nothing follows the pronouncement. No sudden explosion, no interruption from the rest of their ragtag squad of heroes and misfits. Steve coughs, thinking for a heartbeat that she thinks he’s interested in someone else, realising in the next thud of his heart that she’d just come out and _say_  it if that was the case. 

He looks down at the ground. There’s only feet and the wood under them there, so he looks up at the sky instead, scrunching his face up just a little. 

“Probably something stupid,” he admits.

“Scared?”

“Part of it.”

She snorts, finishing off the beer. “Guess that makes two of us.”

The silence stretches between them, filling out what little space there is between them. It should be awkward, but Steve can only feel patience. Comfort. His or hers, it’s impossible to tell, and maybe that’s the point.

A quiet smile works its way onto his face. He clears his throat. “So. If I kissed you now–?”

She’s not looking at him, but her mouth curls up to match his. She sets the bottle aside, and then her body is turning in his. Almost touching, but not quite. “You’d better do a better job of it than last time.”

“I was under duress.”

“That line work on all the dames?”

He rolls his eyes at her, curling his finger under her chin. For a moment, something like trepidation squirms in his gut - worry that this is the wrong play, that he’s misread friendly teasing as something else–

He kisses her. His lips ease over hers because neither of them are gentle, but he thinks they might both deserve it, and she leans into him with every bit of seriousness that the conversation skirted around. The last heat of the dying sun curls in his gut, in the palms of his hands as cup her jaw, curve around her waist. The cotton of his shirt creaks in the grip of her fingers.

He can feel them shake. He can hear his heartbeat and hers, out of sync, fast. Faster. He laughs into her mouth, soft and a little scared. She swallows it down.

“Here I was, worried you weren’t interested.”

“Lucky I’m the brains of the outfit,” she laughs, but the tremble of her lips against his taps out the words, _me too_.

He kisses her again, because he can and he can’t help it. “Don’t I know it.”


End file.
